The Top Ten Movies of 2017 – #06 – Spider-Man: Homecoming

Rory Cashin

“So, to become an Avenger, are there like trials, or an interview?”

Welcome to JOE’s countdown of the Ten Best Movies of 2017. We’ll be counting them down one-by-one, with the #1 spot revealed on New Year’s Eve.

The #06 spot goes to… SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

Irish Release Date: 5 July

Cast: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jnr., Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Zendaya.

Director: Jon Watts

Budget: $175 million

Worldwide Box Office: $880 million

Sony and Disney put aside their differences to work out an arrangement for the future of Spider-Man. He would show up in Captain America: Civil War (and we know from the trailer that he’ll also be appearing in Avengers: Infinity War), and in exchange, for the 1,000,000th reboot of the character, we’d get to see him interact with Iron Man and some of the other members of the MCU.

Andrew Garfield gave good Spiderman but in bad Spiderman movies, while Tobey Maguire suffered from a bit of a “No, seriously, how old are you??” problem for a teenager, but he did get to be a part of Spiderman 2, still one of the best superhero movies to date.

With Homecoming, we got a mix of all the previous pros with none of the cons, and a few added extras to boot, including Michael Keaton’s all-too-real villain, a ground-level perspective of the Avengers’ world, and some great comedy work from Jon Favreau as the constantly put-upon Lucky.

Clip via Marvel Entertainment

Added to that were some fantastic action sequences, including the standout ferry scene as Spider-Man attempts to stop an entire ship from sinking all by himself, and the nail-biting finale as her dukes it out with Keaton’s Vulture on a crashing plane filled with weapons.

The narrowing of the scope allowed for the deepening of our personal investment in the character, as the John Hughes vibe of the out-of-costume scenes were just as interesting as the explosions and web-slinging.

Plus it features one of the best “Gotcha!” moments of the year, made all the more effective because we had no idea it was coming.

And can we just say it? Marisa Tomei is the best version of Aunt May we’ve ever seen, and we really hope she gets more to do in the sequel.

For further reading on our end of year list, check out the following:

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge